So how are you enjoying Sebastian Pinera's I'm A Celebrity For Getting Them Out Of There tour? You've seen it. The one where the right-wing Chilean President hands world leaders a piece of collapsed mine rock as though it were moondust, before standing back and awaiting a look that says: "You and your country are so great I want to put an I Chile sticker on my car windscreen."

The European tour where 25 business leaders, basking in the "Miracle of Los 33", have been flown over to convince foreign investors to "do it the Chilean Way".

And no one has the balls to ask all the president's men how those national heroes ended up stuck down there in the first place? How the miners now say they begged to be winched to the surface after hearing the earth shift, three hours before the collapse, only to be ignored? Because if events had gone the usual "Chilean Way" there would have been no need for Presi-dent Pinera to erect mobile phone masts to allow the world's media to broadcast the rescue from one of the most poverty-stricken areas in South America.

No. Los 33 would have been added to hundreds of Chilean workers who die every year in a country with one of the worst safety records in the world. The corpses of the newly found national heroes would have been swept under the carpet, just like the 443 deaths in Chilean workplaces last year.

No fewer than 24 countries have ratified the International Labour Organisation Safety In Mines Conventions. Chile hasn't.

Despite having mines like the one Los 33 went down which are so dangerous locals called the miners "the kamikazes". A mine which has recently seen 13 men killed, which lacked escape routes and which was closed in 2005 because of bad conditions, only to reopen two years ago.

Chilean miners are treated like cart-horses, made to work long hours for poor pay in a country making a dash for growth at the expense of its workers.

And the billionaire president has the gall to pass off pieces of rock as symbols of his country's industrial excellence when it could so easily have been the very stuff that killed 33 of his expendable compatriots.